What is Trotskyism?, by Ernest Mandel

what is Trotskyism? by_Ernest x ‘ % Ci ~ wal

This pamphlet is based on a speech delivered in 1969 There have been developments in the six years since then, particularly in the Fourth International itself Not only has it grown to include sections in some 40 counties but it has also developed from being a "vibrant youth movement" as Mandel describes it here. He was speaking after the period of international student radicalisation around 19468 when a number of Fourth International sections, notably in Bri tin, Europe and the USA. played major roles in the Vietnam solidarity campaigns of that time.

continued inside back cover: ERNEST MANDEL wes born in Belgium in 1923. In the resistance during the wor, he was arrested three times by the Nazis Escaping twice, he was eventually condemned to hard labour and deported to Germany.

After the war he worked for the Belgian revolutionary socialist weekly La Gauche of which he became editor in 1956 He was a member of the Economic Commission of the Belgian TUC from 1955-61.

A leading militant of the Fourth International, he is the author of "Marxist Economic Theory” and a nunber of other books and pamphlets.

WEA

RONSON

A SPEECH BY ERNEST MANDEL, A LEADING MEMBER OF THE

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, DELIVERED DURING A DEBATE WI

MONTY JOHNSTONE, THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT

BRITAIN'S CHIEF "EXPERT" ON TROTSKYISM.

The fact that Monty Johnstone is here debating wit me this evening on the problem of Trotskyxm today should, in itself, be considered evidence of what Trotskyism is not, I am not going to insult the intelligence of anyone present by saying that it : not counter-revolutionary, or an agency of fasgisr or an agency of imperialism, or any of that nonser For if that were the case, not only would this debate not take place but many other things which have been happening in the world in the last few years would be incomprehensible.

One thing Trotskyism is not, is a defeated tenden in the international workers' movement. It is not a Menshevik-type revision of Marxism that has beer crushed definitively, as was said in the Soviet Ur in its fifteenth party congress in 1927; as was repeated by the unfortunate Nikita Sergeivitch Khrushchev at’ the twentieth party congress of the

= fe 2) taped eee ee ‘Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956; as ha: been repeated over and over again in innumerable publications under the control of the stalinist bureaucracy. Because, if it were really a crushed, defeated, non-existent, eliminated, Menshevik tendency, why would anybody want to discuss with it?

Why is Monty Johnstone here debating? Why is the Soviet bureaucracy, after having crushed, destroyec eliminated and vanquished this tendency, forty, thirty, twenty, and ten years ago, why are the spok -men for these bureaucrats today forced to write books, pamphlets, and articles and keep coming back to this problem? Why have there been three or four new books on Trotskyism published in the Soviet Union in the last twelve months, if ours is a defin itively defeated tendency? — So I think that the first point we ought to make th evening is to render historical justice to the founder of the Red Army and to the leader of the insurrection of the October revolution which initia the first victorious working-class revolution in a whole country. On this ninetieth anniversaryof th birth of Leon Trotsky, which coincides with the anniversary of the October revolution, the politica movement he founded, the ideas he stood for, the programme he defended, live stronger than ever in tl world. There is today a vibrant youth movement. Thousands of young people are coming to Trotskyism all over the world. And that is the only reason Monty Johnstone of the Communist Party feels obliged to debat with us about Trotskyism, That is the only reason why the Soviet bureaucracy has to put out a steady stream of speeches, pamphlets, magazine articles an books on the subject of Trotsky.

Trotskyism today is mainly a youth movement; a movement of youth that is being built and expanded on t!

five continents. For that very same reason I am no going to dwell in the least on the question that Monty Johnstone is going to talk about quite a lot.

7000 militants at the February Ligue Communiste election rally. Ligue candidates received over 250,000 votes in support of their propagandistic campaign.

What Trotsky wrote or did not write in 1905, in 191 in 1917, or in 1918. For I want to say from the beginning that this is pretty irrelevant to the actualities of the contemporary revolutionary struggles. Does anyone really think that 290,000 people vote for a Trotskyist Presidential candidate in France, does anyone really think that in Ceylon today a Trotskyist trade union leader leads tens of thousands of workers in big strikes, does anyone really think that tens of thousands of people demon strate behind banners which the whole of public opinion in Japan today calls Trotskyist, because of what Trotsky wrote in 1907 or 19127 The overwhelming majority of these people have not read what he wrote and are not interested in readin all that - this is a mistake on their part, because everybody should be interested in the history of th revolutionary movement —but they rightly regard tha as irrelevant to the main problem which we have to understand and explain: What is the origin, what i the root of the strength of world Trotskyism today, why do thousands and thousands of people flock to 1 banner on a world scale, and why do the Soviet bure -crats and Monty Johnstone, their British spokesman have to re-open a debate which they hoped had been finished with machine-gun bullets thirty or thirtyfive years ago, in the period of the infamous Mosco Trials ?

2 LE I will give four basic reasons why the Trotskyist Movement is stronger now than ever before; why thot sands of people are adhering to it throughout the world; why it has a bigger numerical, geographical and political extension than ever before, even dur: the 1920s, while it was still a tendency inside th Communist parties and the Communist International, The first reason has to do with a basic problem of the colonial revolution and the way forward for th underdeveloped, semi-colonial countries. Stalinism and Stalinist parties, parties which call themsely Commmist, still follow a Menshevik or semiMenshev policy. That is, they believe as the Russian Mensheviks believed, that because these countries are backward, because the industrial bourgeoisie h.

not yet come to political power, that the immedia strategic task for the working class and poor peasantry is somehow to establish an alliance ‘with national bourgeoisie against imperialism and again feudal and semi-feudal forces. The aim of such an alliance would be to arrive at a coalition form of government -a "government of the four classes" as was called in China from 1925 to 1927 -a governmen of the "National Front",or a regime of "National Democracy", as it was called in the new official programme of the Soviet Commmist Party.

Experience has confirmed what Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution proclaimed as early as 1906; that there is no way out for any underdeveloped colonial or semi-colonial country along such a roa that any struggle that limits itself to fighting against rural, feudal or semi-feudal landlords, or foreign imperialism, while keeping the national bourgeoisie in power, while maintaining capitalist property relations intact, while refraining from establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat allied to the poor peasantry, will inevitably lea these underdeveloped countries backward, stagnatir exploited and superexploited by international and national capital. Such a policy will not be able tear the millions populating these countries out ¢ their age-old miseries. Experience has also taug!

a much more terrible lesson. Thousands and thousan of communists in Brazil in 1964, in Iraq in 1958, a five hundred thousand Commmists in Indonesia in 19 had to pay with their lives for the illusion that i was possible, desirable, or necessary to establish relationships of coalition and collaboration with bourgeois or semi-bourgeois political forces. Such subordination and sacrifice of independent mass struggle can only lead to crushing defeat for the working class and the poor peasantry.

Trotskyism lives and grows, wins new members, attra new tendencies and builds new parties in the underdeveloped countries because it stands for this basi rule of revolution. There is no possibility of acg -ing real national liberation, real independence fr imperialism, without overthrowing the bourgeois cla together with the agents of foreign imperialism and and the feudal and semi-feudal landlords, There is possibility of liberating the people, peasants and workers, without establishing the dictatorship of t proletariat allied with the poor peasantry, without creating a Workers' State. Only in those countries where this happened - China,Cuba, North Vietnam, an it's happening now in South Vietnam - is there a wa to social and economic progress, Wherever, through the responsibility of the Commmist Parties followi the Moscow line, which is Stalinist Menshevism, tha has been prevented from happening, there have been defeats, misery, tears and bloodshed for the workin people of those countries.

It is this contemporary reality, rather than quotations from 1907, 1917 or 1921, that has to be faced by anyone who wants to understand what is goi on in this sector of the world revolution. For the Trotskyist movement, for the revolutionary Marxists throughout the world, it was a moment of great vindication when the leading idea of the permanent revolution —~ that the only road to victory in a backward country is through a socialist revolution was taken over by the Cuban revolutionaries and pro.

claimed in the Second Declaration of Havana, after

the first victorious revolution in the wWestern Hemisphere. This gave proof that Leon Trotsky and the Fourth International had been one hundred per cent correct in their strategic line for the underdeveloped countries. The second reason for the growth of Trotskyism on world scale is that we stand completely and unconditionally for the revolutionary road to socialism : the industrialised imperialist countries as against the reformist electoral read defended by the Commun: Parties in Western Europe, Japan, North America, Australia and New Zealand, When we say that we fol the revolutionary road, this does not mean that we : partisans of putschism or adventurism, that we thin that a few hundred people here and a few hundred th can snatch power unexpectedly without anybody takin: notice of it, in the advanced capitalist countries.

There the bourgeoisie represents tremendous power.

has political experience, it has the benefits of political tradition and political continuity. Its rm over these countries does not depend simply and sol: upon its weapon of repression -its army and its pol - but rather upon the ideological and political inf.

ence it still wields over a large part of the petty bourgeoisie and even among a part of the working cl itself. Our clear and uncompromising stand in favour of the revolutionary road to socialism essentially pivots around three points: Firstly, objective situations independent of t will and control of any group or party periodically create pre-revolutionary situations in industrialis advanced countries. At these moments of revolution mass upsurge these objective situations unavoidably lead to large-scale actions of the working class su as general strikes and factory occupations which obviously go beyond the limits of struggle for imme iate wage demands and working conditions. The duty of revolutionary parties and groups representing th revolutionary vanguard is to prepare themselves and the best working class militants to intervene durin,

these hours, days, and weeks, for it is only throug these periodic upsurges of the mass movement that tl ‘chance is presented to overthrow capitalist power.

You cannot overthrow capitalism gradually; you cann | abolish a bourgeois army battalion by battalion; yo cannot destroy the power of the bourgeoisie piece | piece. You can only accomplish these aims through the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses, and revolutionary actions of this sort are not possible every day when "business as usual" prevails. Revolutionary action is possible only during those pre-revolutionary situations when the tension of th class relations is at its maximum and the class conflict is sharpest. A party, a vanguard and a cl must be prepared to intervene at that juncture in a One of many mobilisations by sections of the Four a VW =— ' <a i Tous -uce f aYs® le hae | - Prat: rams ®

APS

decisive Manner in order to make a breakthrough towards the conquest of power and a victorious socialist revolution. Secondly, if you want to develop a situation i which the working class wants to know what to do ne in which conditions for revolution are favourable, you mist engage in prior propaganda, agitation, and action for transitional demands, especially for the key demand for workers' control of production, whicl crowns all other demands of the working class in it: struggle for power in the industrialised countries.

To think that a working class which has been educati day after day, month after month, year after year, nothing but immediate trade union demands and electttional in solidarity with the Irish revolutionary struggle

eral politics, will, in some mysterious way, suddenl become capable of revolutionary consciousness and action in a revolutionary situation is to believe in magic or miracles. Lenin said that the ABC of revolutionary policy and the duty of a revolutionary party is to conduct revolutionary propaganda also in periods that are no yet revolutionary. Lenin said that this is precisel what makes the difference between a revolutionary an a reformist or centrist party. When revolution does break out, many people suddenly discover their revol utionary soul. But a revolutionary party has the con stant duty to propagandise for revolution, even if t situation has not yet reached the point of showdown between the classes. Its work in this respect can be an influential factor in accelerating revolutionary consciousness, Third] fe believe that the struggle for trangiGionst doknds ; for those demands wheeh cannot be incorpgrated or assimilated into the normal function ing of bourgeois society, should not be conducted solely by propagandistic means, Every opportunity should be taken to impel the working class into moti around such demands. They should be introduced into the ongoing daily struggle of the class by all avenues. Unless the workers acquire experience by fighting for these demands in partial struggles, they will be unable to generalise their outlook at the height of revolutionary intensity, Otherwise, these demands will appear to them as something that falls from the sky, that is imposed from without or advocated only by small minority groups.

I would like to ask Monty Johnstone how he squares the following quotation from Lenin regarding the obligations of a vanguard party with the course followed by the French Commmist Party in May 1968, Lenin said: Will this situation last long ? How mich more acute will it become 7? Will it lead to revolution ? This is something we do not know, and nobody can know. The answer can

be provided only by the experience gained during the development of revolutionary sentiment and the transition to revolutionary action by the advanced class, the proletariat.

There can be no talk in this connection about "illusions" or their repudiation, since no socialist has ever guaranteed that this war (and not the next one), that today's revolutionary situation (and not tomorrow's) will produce a revolution. What we are discussing is the indisputable and fundamental duty of all socialists - that of revealing to the masses the existence of a revolutionary situation, explaining its scope and depth, arousing the proletariat's revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary determination, helping it to go over to revolutionary action, and forming, for that purpose, organisations suited to the revolutionary situation.

Just compere that quotation, which breathes the spirit of genuine Bolshevism, with the conduct of the Communist Parties of France, Italy, Greece and Belgium and other capitalist countries over the past twenty-five years (not to go still further back to the prewar period), especially with the conduct of the French Communist Party in May 1968, and you will understand both the fundamentally reformist characte: of these parties and why thousands of young rebels are adhering to Trotskyism in these countries, The third reason for the growth of Trotskyism today has to do with the crucial question of workers' democracy. The main historical goal to be attained in those countries that have already abolished capitalism is the institution of democratically centralised workers self-management in opposition to the material privileges and the monopoly of political anc economic power wielded by the bureaucracy. The bureaucratic rulers are the object of hatred by thousands of youth,critically minded intellectuals, and advanced workers in these postcapitalist states.

That was graphically evidenced during those few months in the Czechoslovakia of 1968 when these ele ments of the population had the chance to speak out at least in part, their real thoughts and feelings.

The bureaucratic regimes in these countries are one of the main reasons for the discrediting of the cau of socialism in the industrialised West which deter much larger numbers of students, intellectuals, anc workers from coming out wholeheartedly in favour of socialist revolution and cnommnism, What I am referring to is not a full-fledged social ist society, that is to say, a society without any social diffentiation, where commodity production ar money relations have withered away. Such conditior cannot exist in any of the East European countries today and that is not what is involved in our discussion of their political situation and problems, What is both possible and urgently called for in th existing situation is what I call a political revol ution, a set of changes in the superstructure of th system which would initiate or fulfill the elementa demands of the Marxist and Leninist programme on th nature of a dictatorship of the proletariat, leadir to the building of a socialist society. In none of the works by Marx or Engels will you find a single sentence, for example, which asserts that the dicta orship of the proletariat means the monopoly of pow by a single party. Nor will you find the slightest support for the abo inable notion that the dictatorship of the proletar means the application of a repressive censorship, n against nonexistent representatives of capitalism a landlordism, but against the working class, These practices have been introduced and implemented by Stalinism, The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Kremlin burea cracy not only violated the sovereignty and indepen ence of a small nation and a fraternal and allied workers state. It was equally criminal in other re pects. It identified the suppresion of democratic rights such as freedom of expression for workers, students and intellectuals, with the name of Commun by taking away from the Czechoslovakian workers the 12

rights they had regained between January and August 1968 to vote independently on resolutions, to have them published in their trade union journals, to criticise the government if they disagreed with its policies and to criticise the managers of their factories. These were not very extensive rights and they were a far cry from the full-fledged socialist democracy they were entitled to and striving for. Lenin in State and Revolution says that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the workers should have a thousand -fold more freedom of self-expression and selforganisation than they enjoyed under bourgeois democracy. Nevertheless, even this eleanentary right was taken away and hundreds of thousands of soldiers were sent into the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for that purpose. That was a shameful disgrace. That is why we Trotskyists first have to re-establish what Marxism and Leninism really stand for, because the crimes of Stalinism have so distorted their true content in the minds of many workers.

Socialist democracy involves far more then the sel fevident right of the workers to free expression without state censorship or penalties. Socialist democracy means the sé¥f-management of the working class on a democratically centralised basis, It means that the workers should run the factories not only as individual and separate units, but the economy as a whole; This requires the subordination of the national planning authorities to the congress of workers councils. It means that the mass of the working class actually exercises the power and determines through its discussions and decisions how the annual national income shall be divided between the consuption and the accumulation funds, that is, between what is used up and enjoyed for immediate needs, and what is set aside and reinvested for futur growth, Without the possession and exercise of such rights thx working class does not really rule, whatever compliments the official propagamlists may offer to console

it for its lack or loss of power. It is because t Trotskyist programme most consistently advocates s democratic rule of the workers that it is bound te more forces in the Soviet Union and East Europe, » the underlying trends of development are more and directed toward a political revolution by the mass against the arbitrariness of the bureaucratic aute Finally, Trotskyism is most noteworthy today for its uncompromising internationalism, After August 1914 and still more after October 1917, Lenin and Bolsheviks set about to revive the principles and instrument of internationalism which had been trampled upon by the prowar and pro-imperialist so democratic leaders. One of the most bitter fruits the anti-Marxist theory of socialism in one countr which Stalin originated and imposed upon world Commmism from 1924 on, was the violation and the beseeyar of the international solidarity of the class struggle. This flouting of intermatiswe sone culminated in the scuttling of the Communist International by Stalin in 1943 as a favour to Churchill and Roosevelt.

Now the leaders and followers of international Sti inism are beginning to taste some more of these bi fruits, which ¥esult from subordinating the welfa the workers movement to the narrow and selfish dic ates of the Kremlin bureaucracy. They see the appalling spectacle of the two largest workers sti in the world at each other's throats, and even hii ing at the possibilities of hostilities between ei other. This situation has come about not because either the Soviet or the Chinese masses willed it but because it is a logical consequence of the de picable petty bourgeois nationalist tendencies an outlooks that guide the bureaucratic strata at th head of these countries today.

The Soviet leaders have even gone so far as to en -age and allow so-called commmist journalists to talk about "the yellow peril" and to depict the Chinese people as misled by "new Genghis Khan" an a menace to civilisation", The fact that such 14

utterly reactionary and racist utterances can come from a government and a party that still call themselves communist shows the degree of degeneration to to which these organisations have succumbed, At the height of its power, Stalinism boasted of the monolithic character of the world Commmist movement which was bound together by ideological terror and enforced conformity. Now all that is passed. The last Moscow conference of the "World Communist Partii demonstrated how far disintegration has proceeded.

There are hardly two Commnist parties which have an: measure of autonomy today that think alike and pursu the same line. They contend against one amther and harbour all sor of divergent tendencies and factions. One can count up to fifteen "Communist" tendencies on a world scal The Stalinists used to deride the Trotskyist movemen' in the past for being ridden by incessant factionalism and splits. They are silent on this score nowadays - and for good reason! None of the splits among the Trotskyists has been comparable to the gigantic fissures that have opened up in the international Communist movement and keep widening from year to ye: Confronted with the tremendous centralised power of the imperialist counter-rewlution in the world aren: the youth and the revolutionaries on all continents keenly feel the need for an equivalent centralisatior of their own forces, They cannot believe that the polycentrism and decentralisation that characterise world Stalinism - where the revolutionary movement and the working, class in each country is left to its own devices and no one is concerned with the international interests and aims of the struggle for socialism - is ideal, They cannot believe this because it runs counter to the most urgent needs of the struggle of the working masses and to the traditions of Marxism and Leninism, They were moved to respond so powerfully to Che Guevara's famous appeal for "two, three, many Vietnams™" because it corresponded to their innermost urge for an international coordination or their anticolonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist

efforts. Che's final message was essentially a c for some central leadership for the world revolut This explains why the idea of the Fourth Internat.

as a new revolutionary working-class organisation carrying on the best traditions of Marxism, which many dismissed as unreal and Utopian, is capturin the minds and stirring the imagination of thousan of young people all over the globe. The socialis revolution cannot advance and certainly cannot triumph on a world scale without the resurgence o the need for a new revolutionary international impressing itself on the consciousness of serious fighters for a new world. The international we w to build and are building will be centralised, bu it will not be bureaucratically centralised, It w the bureaucratic centralism of the Stalinist type that fake centralism which had nothing in common | Lenin's conceptions of organising the working-cla vanguard, which spawned the disintegrated and reactionary tendencies at work in the world Comm movement today. History will prove that democrat centralism, with its freedom of discussion, is no obstacle but the indispensable vehicle for elabor ing a programme and implementing united action ag the class enemy, These, then, are the four pillars of Trotskyism today: the theory and practice of the permanent revolution, the revolutionary road to socialism through working-class mass action in the advanced capitalist gpuntries, political revolution for socialist democracy in the Soviet bloc and China, and proletarian internatiomlism, The Fourth Int national is a growing force on all of the contine because its fundamental ideas express the objecti requirements of the world revolutionary process a carry on the ideas of Leninism, of socialism and communism in our epoch.

continued from inside front cover: Since then o massive resurgence in working class struggle has taken place and many Fourth International sections have been developing to become forces capable of intervening in such struggles An example is the French section Alongside its success in driving fascist groups off the streets of France, it has been able to lead solidarity campaigns with workers in struggle and to organise successful workers conferences Another example is the Spanish group. LCR, which recently fused with the Basque ETA VI movement Events in the world political scene since 1969 have reinforced the points made by Mandel here In particular there was an addition to the list of "defeats. misery.

tears and bloodshed" caused by the protagonists of a "peaceful road" to socialism This came with the betrayal of the Chilean workers and peasants by those who refused to prepare and arm them against the right wing The result was the succesful and bloody coup of the military dictatorship in September 1973.

The fact that Stalinist groups continue to pursue "peaceful road" policies to the extent that in countries such as France, Portugal, Italy and Spain the Communist Parties aim to put a brake on mass working class struggle in order that they can ally with sections of the ruling class makes all the more relevant today this basic principle wf Trotskyism: that the revolutionary road with mass working class action is the only road to socialism. Printed in Ireland Copyright Plough Book Service, 1975.

A REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST GROUP PAMPHLET

Also available: British Strategy in Northern Ireland - from the White Paper to the fall of Sunningdale 25p James Connolly: Socialisn Made Easy 15p British |mperialism and Irish Nationalism 25p. w i r Order from: Plough Book Service c/o 38 Clanawley Road, Killester, Dublin 5, or Plough Book Service, 72 Castle Street, El fast. Published by the Revolutionary | Marxist Group (Irish Section of the Fourth International)